Eric Church moves to arenas with ‘Blood, Sweat & Beers’ tour

Given his ACM and CMA nominations and top-selling country album Chief, there’s no denying that Eric Church has had a blockbuster year in country music. Now he’s using those milestones as steps to the next level in his career — arena headliner.

Church announced his 50-plus-city Blood, Sweat & Beers tour last week, and while Nashville is on the itinerary, a firm date hasn’t been announced. Brantley Gilbert will open the show along with others including Blackberry Smoke, Sonia Leigh and Jon Pardi.

“It’s nuts, you know,” Church says. “I’m a little apprehensive about it, but everything looks right. We’ve built a career slowly. It’s not like we’re stepping out there in untested waters.”

Church says his first inkling that he was ready to play arenas came when Chief debuted atop the Billboard albums chart in August with 145,000 copies sold. It went gold in two months.

“Blood, sweat, and beer, it’s taken me a lot of all three of those things to get to where we are,” Church says. “We’ve scraped and clawed. It’s fitting for my crowd.”

But Church says that even in the bigger space, he’s going to make sure that nothing overshadows his music.

“We’re going to have some things that are able to relate to a bigger room better, but it comes down to the music and it comes down to the passion, and I think it’s that energy that feeds the room,” he says. “I’ve been on the biggest tours and the smallest tours, and the one thing I’ve learned is that it’s not how many toys you have, it’s how much passion does the music have.”

And when Church rolls out next year to bring his music to the masses, he’s going to do so with a new support crew, of sorts. He and wife Katherine have opted for a family bus on this tour in order to make their new son, Boone McCoy, as comfortable as possible.

“We’re all going to pile on and be the gypsies that roll up and down the highway,” he says.